Phenology of wood formation in larch (Larix decidua Mill.) trees growing along a 1000-m elevation gradient in the French Southern Alps

center dot Key message Spring temperature increase is the main driver of larch tree wood formation onset along a 1000-m elevation gradient in the Southern Alps, while its cessation is more probably controlled by water stress at the lowest elevation and photoperiod at higher ones. center dot Context The survival of perennial plants depends on their adaptation to changing environment and specially temperature, which in trees is notably implemented through wood formation process. center dot Aims Our main objective is to understand how the phenology of wood formation is related to environmental factors and to temperature in particular. center dot Methods We monitored the xylogenesis of 60 larch trees, distributed in four stands along an elevation gradient of 1000 m in the French Southern Alps. center dot Results Cambial activity started around mid-May at the lowest site (1350 m) and around mid-June at the highest one (2300 m), showing a delay of 5.4 days per degrees C. The onset of wall-thickening and mature phenophases followed the same linear trend with a delay of 5.2 and 3 days per degrees C, respectively. Phenophase cessations followed a parabolic trend with trees from the lowest site finishing their growth the first, while those from 1700 m finished the last. Our results show that the onset of xylem formation is mainly driven by spring temperature increase, while its cessation is more related to photoperiod, with water shortage being able to hasten it. center dot Conclusion Future climatic changes will most probably increase growing season length (but not necessarily wood production) and shift upwards the optimal elevation for larch growth in the Southern Alps

Chilling and forcing temperatures interact to predict the onset of wood formation in Northern Hemisphere conifers

The phenology of wood formation is a critical process to consider for predicting how trees from the temperate and boreal zones may react to climate change. Compared to leaf phenology, however, the determinism of wood phenology is still poorly known. Here, we compared for the first time three alternative ecophysiological model classes (threshold models, heat-sum models and chilling-influenced heat-sum models) and an empirical model in their ability to predict the starting date of xylem cell enlargement in spring, for four major Northern Hemisphere conifers (Larix decidua, Pinus sylvestris, Picea abies and Picea mariana). We fitted models with Bayesian inference to wood phenological data collected for 220 site-years over Europe and Canada. The chilling-influenced heat-sum model received most support for all the four studied species, predicting validation data with a 7.7-day error, which is within one day of the observed data resolution. We conclude that both chilling and forcing temperatures determine the onset of wood formation in Northern Hemisphere conifers. Importantly, the chilling-influenced heat-sum model showed virtually no spatial bias whichever the species, despite the large environmental gradients considered. This suggests that the spring onset of wood formation is far less affected by local adaptation than by environmentally driven plasticity. In a context of climate change, we therefore expect rising winter-spring temperature to exert ambivalent effects on the spring onset of wood formation, tending to hasten it through the accumulation of forcing temperature, but imposing a higher forcing temperature requirement through the lower accumulation of chilling